 |
|
|
NEW
HOME PERMITS SURGE Lee County's new-home construction industry has weathered the summer's storms from the looks of near-record housing permit figures released Monday. "I think the new home construction industry was not that affected except that it's increasing prices," said Michael Reitmann, executive vice president of the Lee Building Industry Association. "We've never seen a dramatic effect because the people in the new-home business are not in the repair business." For unincorporated Lee County, including Fort Myers Beach and Bonita Springs, 641 single-family permits were issued compared with 474 in October 2003. In Cape Coral, 573 permits were issued in October compared with 531 a year earlier. In Fort Myers, where much of the recent construction has been multifamily condo towers, 37 permits were issued compared with 48 a year earlier. The county and Cape Coral numbers were both second only to the records set in June (666 for Lee) and July (577 for Cape). August and September permits were down substantially, Reitmann said, because of "the difficulty of getting materials and labor, primarily roofing." Even so, Cape Coral and the county showed increases over 2003 for the three-month period of August through October: 1,614 permits in 2004 versus 1,468 in 2003 for the county and 1,490 permits in 2004 versus 1,254 in 2003 for the Cape. Darryl Aubuchon, vice president of Cape Coral-based Aubuchon Homes, said the main effect of Hurricane Charley's arrival Aug. 13 in Southwest Florida and the other storms that hit Florida after that was that "people are a little more conscious of storm protection so they're asking more questions about it. Somebody coming through a model home wants to know how well your houses fared during the storm. I think anyone in a model home has been asked that question." Aubuchon houses did well during Charley in part because they're luxury homes with tile or metal roofs that generally did not sustain the damage inflicted on some shingle roofs, he said. "Really, I saw all the damage," Aubuchon said. "Most of that was built (prior to 2002) before the current codes existed. Once you tell people that, it really sets them at ease about building a house in Florida." After the hurricanes, Reitmann said, builders were worried that buyers from the North would be permanently deterred. "People were predicting people wouldn't move here." But, he said, "I don't think that's happened at all. The fact remains, Lee County has relatively inexpensive real estate available compared to the rest of the country and especially compared to Collier." Paul Kaufmann, president of Fort Myers-based Mastercraft Home Builders, said the hurricanes aren't much of a factor these days. "I think people tend to forget about that after awhile. Obviously this is a market where you have people retiring, moving down here, trying to get away from the cold, and that has continued." If anything, he said, the market has become more competitive for developers as national companies such as KB Home increasingly operate in this area. The increasing price of building materials such as steel and concrete, along with likely increases in impact fees, probably will hurt the sale of the cheapest homes but not of more expensive ones, Reitmann said. "It's not going to blunt any overall increases; it's going to blunt the ability of the average working-class people to buy a new home." |